The city of Tifton has always had a passion for the arts, whether it be through festivals, public displays, or local exhibitions. Helping that passion continue to burn brightly is the city’s own local art gallery.

Located just outside of the city’s downtown area, Plough Gallery has served as a polestar for artistic expression in Tifton for nearly a decade, showcasing the creative works of over ninety artists from across the country for residents of the Friendly City to engage with.

Through regular exhibits with local and national artists, the pieces of various artistic mediums on display and for sale within their walls, and the occasional communal event or class, the gallery has encouraged their patrons to explore and examine a wide range of art–perhaps even wider than they’re used to exploring.

“It’s not in a negative way, but what is shown in Tifton tends to be of a traditional mindset,” said Mark Errol, co-owner of the gallery. “We wanted to push into contemporary, and challenge people to look at art in a different way.”

Errol and his fellow co-owner Glenn Josey first opened the gallery in 2015 at a smaller location on College Avenue, initially planning to use it as a studio for Errol’s work. Josey had informed him of an artistic lull in the city left by the recent retirement of arts festival the Love Affair, and with his extensive history with the arts, including studying at an art school in New York, working in the fashion industry, and having over twenty-five years of experience in pottery, his craft of expertise, he was eager to leave his footprint on the Friendly City.

“He needed a workspace, so we rented a small space,” Josey said. “Then, when his work started to sell vigorously and he couldn’t keep up with demand, he reached out to other clay artists for representation, to see if they wanted to be represented in addition to his work. It was kind of like a domino effect–one person started showing, then they told somebody and then they wanted to show, we asked somebody else, they asked somebody else, and it just kind of…blossomed.”

However, this first location would prove to have challenges as a gallery, namely a lack of space. The single room they had, barely larger than one of their current exhibit rooms, was used for both Errol’s studio and the display of art, leaving scant space for the latter. Errol recalls openings at the gallery drawing in such a crowd that many patrons had to wait outside for the few within the gallery to finish looking around.

He also noted that the storefront lacked wall space; due to the age of the building, the walls weren’t made for hanging anything on them, prohibiting the artists from displaying hanging artwork or paintings. After two years, Errol and Josey realized they needed more room to do what they wanted with Plough, and relocated to their current place of business on 8th St.

“We moved because we wanted to be able to do more with the space as far as representation of artists and the types of art,” Errol said. “This space has afforded us that.”

The new location allowed the gallery to branch out into showcasing other forms of art, especially 2D mediums, now that they had the wall space to properly display them.

Errol had numerous connections with other artists, garnered from his years of experience working in his own craft, that they could draw on to bring new pieces and art forms to the gallery and fill out their exhibit halls.

He and Josey also remained on watch for prominent artists to negotiate exhibitions with and expand what Plough Gallery could offer, forming those connections through word of mouth, actively seeking them out, or the occasional artist who came to their door knocking.

This included opening their doors to up and coming artists needing a place to really show what they could do, which the gallery was more than happy to provide to them.

In the early days of the gallery, the pair even had a few artists in residence, earning a full ride to Florida State University thanks to her time there and going on to craft public arts projects in Washington, D.C., much to the pride of Errol and Josey.

“We wanted to always be the space where these artists could get their start, because a lot of galleries have such overhead and thengs like that,” Errol said. “They’re not willing to take risks on new artists, where we can make this work with bare bones and give artists the opportunity to be represented.”

Since its relocation, the gallery has partnered with over thirty artists to bring just as many exhibitions to Tifton, ranging from paintings of people in boxes depicting personal boundaries and illuminated faux stained glass art evoking images of Tifton to ceramic sculptures debating the concept of motherhood and graphic ciphers exploring the interaction between history and material culture.

Among these artists have been of Errol’s former students, whom he is proud to see having made their mark on the artistry scene as professional artists in their own right.

As of recently, the gallery has elected to slow down their rate of hosting exhibits and events, starting with their most recent exhibition, “Collage Dropout,” showcasing the collage work of Texas artist Antonio Bond.

While this is partially to allow Tifton residents to observe the work on display for longer periods, Errol and Josey also hope to take a step back and examine the direction they want to take their gallery with the turn of 2024, not only striking a new path for the art scene of Tifton, but finding a way to surprise, intrigue, and challenge their community once more.

“As a gallery in a small town, we educate,” Josey said. “That’s probably the number one thing we do: we educate the public about things they’ve never seen or been exposed to before, m and then we educate new artists who are seeking representation and are learning how to be professional artists in the real world. We mentor, we educate, on both ends–from the public and the artist.”